It’s been more than a year since coronavirus took birth and started spreading across the world. Although authorities and people have provided their best to tone it down and stop it, the virus is still at large, and, to be frank, people have stopped caring a while ago. According to health officials, people still need to be as vigilant as they were at the time of the first outbreak.
Due to the uncertainty that we all are going through, this article highlights COVID-19’s history, when and how did it start, how it spreads, and what can be done about it now.
How It Started?
Experts have an opinion that SARS-CoV-2, a disease caused by the coronavirus, was first originated in bats. And bats are also the supposed reason behind severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), the diseases that are caused by a coronavirus.
Jumping to where it started, officials claimed that the virus jumped from bats to humans at an open-air “wet market” in Wuhan, China. That is the place where customers buy fresh meat from different animals, including bats, including the ones that are killed on the spot. Some wet markets in China even sell animals kike cobras, raccoon dogs, and wild boars—which are banned in different states. However, it came to light later that the Wuhan market wasn’t selling bats when the virus outbroke. So, the experts became suspicious of the Pangolins, the scaly-shelled anteaters. Pangolins are illegal; however, they were sold in some markets of China at the time of the outbreak. Medical experts say that coronavirus that infected pangolins are similar to the SARS-CoV-2 that affects humans.
Crowds in Wuhan’s market allowed the virus to be transmitted to humans, and it gradually started spreading among people. It soon fell out of the small market and started transmitted from people to people, to those who didn’t even have any connection with infected animals in the first place.
A Fact: SARS-CoV-2 (another name for coronavirus) took its name due to its similarity to the SARS virus that took birth in China in 2002-2003. However, it didn’t spread much at that time and was stopped eventually. Experts say that coronavirus is a comeback addition of the virus that automatically stopped in 2003.
Where Does It Stand?
Coronavirus, after killing millions of people and affecting millions of lives, was finally toned down when the world started isolating, locking down, and socially distancing itself. Those measures surely decreased the level of threat. The latter part of 2020 was a witness to a great battle in which humans finally took control. In the end, we even saw a vaccine being developed.
Although the world is gradually getting better—we hope—and vaccines are being injected phase by phase to people, authorities still recommend rapid coronavirus testing so it can be possible to identify carriers and treat them specially. If you are based in Chicago, tests—which are still recommended by medical experts—can be done at ChicagoCovidTest.com, a reputable clinic with quick COVID-relief services.
